


ad honorem

by zenelly



Series: Leopika Week 2018 [3]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Leopika Week 2018, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, love is a Choice made every day, non-romantic soulmates, past leorio/pietro, warning for non-romantic kurapika/chrollo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 14:05:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15909756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenelly/pseuds/zenelly
Summary: For Leopika Week Day 3! Prompt: The kids aren't alright.Gon and Killua meet with a nearly audible click of a clock’s hands settling into place. They meet and smile and laugh and hold onto each other, delighted and flushed with new potential. Leorio trades glances with Kurapika. His mouth tilts in a wry grin. Kids. Seeing them find their soulmates is cute, isn’t it? Even the rest of the examinees around them shoot the two of them fond glances until the run takes up their entire attention.He ignores the way his wrist burns.He ignores the way Kurapika adjusts his sleeve, subtly checking the numbers still ticking down on his wrist.It’s okay.It’ll be okay.





	ad honorem

**Author's Note:**

> Done for Leopika Week Day 3! As usual, I took a prompt and went sideways with it, but the result turned out good. Warning that the Kurapika/Chrollo in here is strictly non-romantic. If you're here for that to be romantic, seek your content elsewhere.
> 
> A huge thank you to Eddy, who helped me come up with the idea for what to do on this day because I was SUPER STUCK.

Gon and Killua meet with a nearly audible click of a clock’s hands settling into place. They meet and smile and laugh and hold onto each other, delighted and flushed with new potential. Leorio trades glances with Kurapika. His mouth tilts in a wry grin. Kids. Seeing them find their soulmates is cute, isn’t it? Even the rest of the examinees around them shoot the two of them fond glances until the run takes up their entire attention.

He ignores the way his wrist burns.

He ignores the way Kurapika adjusts his sleeve, subtly checking the numbers still ticking down on his wrist.

It’s okay.

It’ll be okay.

* * *

 

(It is, and it isn’t. 

Leorio’s timer has been zero for almost as long as he cares to remember, having shuddered down to a deep red zero when he knocked hands with another boy while rooting around in the trash looking for food. Pietro had blinked and grinned and shoved him over and taken the best looking slice of bread out of the bin. Tearing it in half, he offered part to Leorio and said, “Well, we’re in this shit together forever then, aren’t we?”

All of twelve and starving, Leorio took the chunk of bread and shoved it in his mouth before answering, “Forever.”

Because that’s what soulmates _are_ , aren’t they? Soulmates are a piece of you, taken and put in the core of another person, always fated to meet, always fated to be the most important force in your life.

But not, as Leorio discovered, fated to _stay_.

Pietro’s cough was nothing at first. They all got sick, in the dust and debris, with no clean food and water to depend on. Leorio held him and started saving money, something going off in the back of his head warning him that they’d need it. It started easy.

And it grew.

Leorio eventually forgot what it was like to look at Pietro and not see flakes of blood dried in the corner of his mouth. He forgot what it was like to not sleep sitting upright, Pietro braced in his arms as he coughed throughout the night.

It took forever for Leorio to wear Pietro down enough to go to the doctor’s, Pietro getting the stubborn slant to his mouth that Leorio could never get to go away, and in the cold waiting room, they clutched each other’s hands.

“I don’t like this,” Pietro muttered, covering his mouth as another set of coughs rack his body.

Leorio slid his fingers between Pietro’s, thumbed over the series of red zeroes on his wrist, and couldn’t explain the tired, desperate fear that kept him awake night after night, listening for the unsteady rattle of Pietro’s breath. “I don’t either,” he said. “But the books I’ve been reading all say-“

“ _Books_ ,” Pietro said with a hoarse laugh. “Leo, with the amount you’ve read, _you_ could probably be a better doctor than these guys.”

Grinning, Leorio lifts their joined hands and kisses the back of Pietro’s. “Don’t fuckin’ tempt me.”

And then all that came after. The tests, the abject horror of knowing, even as Pietro wasted away in Leorio’s arms, that it was preventable if only they had the money for it, until one morning, Leorio woke up to the sun streaming on his face, filtering through the dusty air.

The room was quiet.

Shaking, Leorio lifted his arm from its position around Pietro and looked, uncomprehending, at the zeroes on his wrist. A dull grey instead of vibrant red, and Leorio sobbed and mourned and set out in life to do better, to _be_ better. For the memory of warm lips on his and the shake of a coughing body in his arms.)

 

* * *

 

Pietro may be gone and Leorio’s wrist has long displayed grey instead of anticipatory black or steadfast red, but Leorio has kept his _eyes_ okay? Kurapika is gorgeous, fiery with derision and anger and the brand of sly sarcasm that has Leorio’s stomach tying itself in knots even as Kurapika saves his life and insults him in the same breath. It’s fun. It’s like trying to scavenge the same food and winding up with your soulmate.

Leorio _likes_ bickering. He likes watching the high flush of frustration and the way Kurapika can’t seem to stop smiling when he’s trying to scowl. He likes the easy way Kurapika knocks into him, self-assured and strong.

But Kurapika isn’t unbound.

Kurapika’s wrist bears black numbers marching down to an inevitable conclusion, and Leorio holds his own as a careful secret. It’s already clearly not him. Kurapika keeps his eyes forward and his lips parted and he’s _lovely_ and Leorio hopes with an aching desperation, that the person out there who is meant for him is perfect.

 

* * *

 

(Is, and is not.

Kurapika comes back to him shaking and furious, eyes blazing red and when Leorio asks why, when Kurapika negotiates for Gon and Killua’s freedom, Kurapika does not answer. Kurapika has his sleeves rolled tightly down and a distant look to his eyes. When Kurapika gets the news about the Troupe’s death, there’s a level of uncertainty to his expression as he moves through the next few hours like a man underwater. A certain disbelief.

A certain disbelief that melts into a despairing certainty.

Leorio comes to sit beside him. Kurapika does not lift his gaze from his hands, folded neatly between his knees. He clears his throat carefully. “Everything okay?”

For a moment, nothing. Leorio considers trying again when Kurapika slowly lifts one arm and offers it, wrist up, to Leorio. Hesitating, Leorio pushes back the cuff of Kurapika’s shirt.

There, red and aching, is a line of zeroes.

“It was him,” Kurapika says hollowly. His eyes finally rise, and Leorio swallows hard to stymie the flood of tears that spring to his eyes at how fucking _beaten_ Kurapika seems in that moment. “Of all people, Leorio. It was _him_.”

“Oh Kurapika,” Leorio whispers.

There is no misunderstanding who he means. Leorio folds Kurapika into his arms so fucking carefully, holding him as he shakes because soulmates, they say, change you.

No rule ever says the change must be positive.

Kurapika pulls back. “Leorio, please, I-“

And Leorio kisses him, because Leorio _loves_ him, knows this to be true, because his heart is crushing itself from the inside with no numbers left to guide it. When Kurapika opens for him and bears him down to the mattress, Leorio just hopes it sticks. Hopes, as he traces the lines of Kurapika’s body and kisses him and kisses him and kisses him, that this will stay.

Devotion is, after all, another matter entirely.)

 

* * *

 

The little old ladies who live across the street from Leorio tut over his covered wrist. “It’s just that my partner is very private,” he says, running a nail across the worn leather. It’s the only thing he keeps on him at his clinic, tucked beneath his gloves, because he’s learned over time that he hates the look of pity in people’s eyes. It’s the only time he’s glad he looks older than he is. Being sixteen and seeing horror and clutched wrists in other people’s faces was hard enough.

When Kurapika comes around, his wrist bare, blazing red, the ladies chortle and send him sweets, pulling Kurapika to the side to gossip about how demure Leorio has been, and what a pity it was that he had been keeping such a handsome young man from them. Kurapika levels Leorio an amused look and sits with them, chattering long into the morning about Leorio’s busy work schedule and what it is that keeps Kurapika away from him for such long stretches.

“He needs someone to keep him in order,” one of them tuts.

And Kurapika, amused as he bites into another biscuit, says, “Yes, yes he does.”

“Alright that’s enough out of you.” Leorio looms over them, hands planted on his hips. A smile twitches the corners of his mouth, but he fights it down as best as he can. “Stop gossiping and come home already will you?”

“You take care of that doctor of yours, you hear?” the other old woman says, and Kurapika bows to her even as he lets Leorio crowd him off.

Once they’re in the safety of their own apartment, Kurapika touches the leather band. “You’re still hiding it.”

Leorio shrugs with one shoulder. “It’s easier, this way. To let everyone think it’s you and I’m just private.”

Kurapika’s mouth thins, but his eyes are understanding. He takes a step closer, coming into the circle of Leorio’s arms. “Soulmates change the course of your life,” Kurapika says, peeling off the raw scab of this particular never-healing wound. “For worse or for better. That’s all it means. Everything after that is a choice.”

And then, softly, “I wish it had been you.”

Leorio lets out a quiet, desperate noise. He holds Kurapika tightly to him.

“We’re making it work anyway,” Leorio says into Kurapika’s hair, true and certain to the core of himself. Their wrists lie beside each other. The zeroes are red and grey, dissonant and mismatched, but Kurapika is right here with him. Pietro may have shaped Leorio’s life, but Kurapika is part of it now, and Leorio intends to keep him as long as possible. “You and me. We’re making it work.”

“Are we?” Kurapika murmurs. He shakes his head. “If it had been you. If you had found me when you were young. I would have taught you so much about my people. I would have taught you everything. Maybe our medicines could have saved him.”

Leorio presses his lips together. “I would have loved you then, too.”

“Maybe,” Kurapika says, hiccupping out a sob, “if it had been you, they would all still be alive.”

“And I would love you.” Leorio kisses his way down Kurapika’s face, tear-slick and beautiful, even as his heart aches. “Just as I do now. If it had been you for me, I would live in the woods with your family. Maybe I’d be a teacher. You could teach me to farm.”

Kurapika snorts wetly. “You’d be terrible at farming.”

“You could teach me anyway. And Pietro and Pairo would make fun of us both for dancing around the topic when we’ve been soulmates from day one,” Leorio says. “But you and me now, we’re making the choice.”

Gripping the fabric of his shirt tightly, Kurapika nods. Then again, firmer this time. “We are. And Leorio? I love you.”

“I love you too, Kurapika.”

And it’s okay.


End file.
